Re: [xml-dev] Using entities for me dash problem

[JCS <subscriber@pezagency.com>]

On 9/12/03 5:15 AM, "David Carlisle" <davidc@nag.co.uk> wrote:

> 
> 
>> I'm not sure what you mean by this... :?
> 
> I replied to you on xml-dev (although cc'ed to you) your followup
> question was sent to me privately and not to the list.
> This is bad style.
> 
> The second point is that your initial qustion didn't mention xslt but it
> seemed from your followup that that's really the context of your
> question and if so xslt questions are better asked on xsl-list than
> xml-dev.


You're not sending me messages through the list for some reason.
I'm very busy and hit the reply button on my mail--I've never had a problem
with this before. If you check the mail you'll see you sent me two messages,
on that had a reply path to the list and one with a reply path directly to
you. I have no idea why.

I think assuming other people are making mistakes when you're in error is
also "bad style". I appreciate the help, work, and effort that you put into
this list but that doesn't exempt you from making mistakes. What I mean is,
I don't know what's going on, but it has nothing to do with me, so please
don't assume that I'm taking anything "off list".


> 
>> Now I'm confused. Does that mean that when I do have an XML
>> document with UTF-8 encoding I shouldn't see any NCR?
> 
> Yes: ASCII only encodes 127 characters, so if you have an ASCI file and
> want to refer to a character that is above 127 you can't enter the
> character directly so you use an NCR. UTF8 (and UTF16) encode the whole
> of unicode so there are no characters that can not be accessed by
> character data, so your xslt engine will output all characters directly
> (except xml syntax characters, < and &)

Thanks, I'm aware of this, however, what I *don't* understand because it
makes no logical sense, is that if I'm transforming XML UTF-8 to UTF-8 my
declaration should be UTF-8, not something else. What I mean is, if I use
US-ASCII as an output method to preserve my NCR the declaration in the
output file should still be UTF-8, not ASCII, because it's NOT ascii but it
was *translated* using ASCII to preserve the NCR. Does this make sense? What
is it that *I'm* not getting, because it's very confusing.

 
>> Furthermore, it's not valid XML, is it? I don't think so...
> It's valid if you have specified a DTD, it's well formed in any case.

Yes, but I thought using the glyph instead of the NCR was not valid XML?


>> If I transform a document with the output as
>> UTF encoded XML, I *should* get NCR, not glyphs, right?
> 
> As I say you are very unlikely to get NCR, you can't get glyphs (glyphs
> are a pictorial representation, which relate to fonts etc, not to
> characters in an XML file) But you would expect to get character data
> not NCRs
> 
> But as I say above _please_ don't use private mail, keep things on list.

Glyphs are what you are reading right now, if you want to call them
"characters" then that's fine by me. But you still haven't answered my
question--if I transform a document with UTF encoded XML, it should output
NCR data, not glyphs, or characters. In other words, I would imagine the XML
declaration of the output should be independent of how the document was
transformed, because it's not an actual representation of what it's supposed
to be--it's false. &#8212 is not ASCII data, is it? So why does my output
declaration state that it is? The output declaration is linked to the output
method which isn't logical because the transform assumes I want to view the
document, not encode it. Is this an application/parsing error or is this
currently how XSL works?

And again, regarding the private mail, if you don't want any, _please_ don't
send _me_ private mail, because I just hit the reply button.

Regards,

/johnny :)





-- 
If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a
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-- Gelett Burgess